A Rant Against Removing Comedy Sketches From YouTube

Comedy series are a great thing. But how do you get to choose a comedy series to watch? You can either listen to a friend’s advice, or dedicate 2 hours for watching a couple of episodes, before you know you like it.

Well, there’s another option – that was the case of how I got to watch Family Guy, for example. Someone sends you a short sketch/joke on YouTube. Then you click through a couple more. That way you “test” the series by watching some preview jokes. It’s like a perfume tester – a small dose that helps you decide you want to watch it. But there’s a bonus – it can get viral-ish. You tweet a joke, someone retweets it, and immediately you get this to the attention of hundreds of people. Great, right?

Well, it seems producers don’t see it that way. I’ve seen a lot of these sketches removed from YouTube. I want to send a particular joke relevant to some real-life situation, and I can’t find it anymore. It’s deleted by the “owners”. It’s their content, they have the right to do so. But who, in their right mind, would reduce the virality of their own jokes? When will a perfume manufacturer forbid testers. Not only that – do you think a perfume tester would ban users from making their own testers and giving them to friends? Sounds ridiculous. Somehow, though, it sounds OK when it’s online. And when the product is not something you just “buy”, but something you watch, thus increasing its rating.

The “war” on piracy now has a lot of clueless decision makers and that damages both content creators and consumers.